Windows Setup Guide

Use these steps to run the vBase samples from PowerShell on Windows 10 or 11.

1. Install Python and Git

Install Python for Windows and select Add Python to PATH in the installer. The core samples support Python 3.8 or newer; the optional Alpaca sample requires Python 3.10 or newer.

Install Git for Windows when you want to clone the repository. Git is not required when you use the ZIP download option below.

Open PowerShell and confirm the tools are available:

python --version
git --version

2. Get the samples

Option 1: Clone with Git

Create only the parent directory, then clone the repository into it:

New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force "$env:USERPROFILE\Projects\validityBase"
Set-Location "$env:USERPROFILE\Projects\validityBase"
git clone https://github.com/validityBase/vbase-py-samples.git
Set-Location vbase-py-samples

Option 2: Download a ZIP

Open the vbase-py-samples repository, select Code, then Download ZIP. Extract it under a directory such as %USERPROFILE%\Projects\validityBase, rename the extracted folder to vbase-py-samples, and open PowerShell in that folder.

3. Create the environment

From the repository root, create and activate a virtual environment, then install the samples:

python -m venv venv
.\venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1
python -m pip install --upgrade pip
python -m pip install -r requirements-win.txt

If PowerShell prevents the activation script from running, see Microsoft’s execution policy documentation. In Command Prompt, activate the same environment with venv\Scripts\activate.bat.

4. Configure vBase

Copy the safe environment template:

Copy-Item .env.example .env

Open .env, set VBASE_API_KEY to the key from vBase Account Settings, and save the file. Never commit .env.

5. Run a sample

python samples\create_set.py
python samples\add_string_dataset_record.py

See the Quickstart for Amazon S3 and verifier configuration.